I used to play AD&D first edition, but it was hard to find people who both were interested and had similar life schedules. After I started LOTRO though my kinship ended up blatantly using a lot of D&D methods to improve the limits of ingame roleplay, establishing a GM, dice rolls, etc...

Well, Friday went well.
It started off a bit slow but we got through it.

I had the party meet up with a two wagon caravan headed for Port Neritt.
What they didn't know was the people on and around the wagons were actually bandits.
It took a little bit of talking and rolling percent dice before they figured it out.
But they won the battle and got the rewards.

Playing 1e still. Can't seem to get my mind around the other versions.
Yes, DMing too. I can totally relate to the inexperienced DM.
When I started running the game, I was so lame it was pitiful.
But I stuck with it as did my players and I like to think I've improved.
So, enjoy your enthusiastic new DM and watch how he improves with time.

We won't be playing until the 18th of May so I'll have some time to tweek the game.

I wasn't expecting it, but we got tossed back into the big long one that the couple were taking turns running; this is the next stage. This is where I'm running my fighter-priest dwarf. She's probably the most recent character I generated, but thanks to this adventure she's now the highest level!

She's fighter 8, priest 9. Yesterday we went up against a drider who was commanding some svirfneblin who should have been allies, and a critter whose name I can't remember but was giant and froglike and naaasty! Boy did we get points! And recruited the svirfneblin too.

We'll be playing again on the 20th; next week though we won't be, because we have tickets for Weird Al Yankovic. We always try to catch him when he comes to Connecticut. Then we'll have Memorial Day weekend off, and get back into it in June.

The wife is running the game this time, so my hubby is running her character along with his own. We have a growing number of NPCs on our side now, so it'll get interesting.

I made him up because of a thread I was reading on another board.
They wondered if Dwarfs could like water or something like that.
Anyway someone brought up a Dwarven sea captain and I really liked the notion,
So enter Rankor Stonbridge Captain of the Stone Wave.
A fine two masted cargo hauler that crawls the coast line between Port Nerritt and Rockbreach Shallows.

I patterned him after Barbosa from the Pirate movies.
He's not afraid of the sea because he has ring of Water Breathing.
After we made it safely to Rockbreach, he tried to get Joroack, our Gnome thief/assassin to join the crew.
Joroack politely declined the offer.

Rockbreach, Tosh found out the hard way, is leary of Magics and those who use them.
He got beat up when he asked the way to the Muser Guild.

But now we are on our way Northward to map and see if we can find the dome.

We didn't play this past weekend. I got a cold. And the husband whose house we play in is a kidney-transplant recipient and they're always trying to keep him away from germs. (He had his transplant on our wedding day--over 21 years ago!) This coming weekend there's a weekend-long SCA event which will take out one of our other players, so the couple asked us if we wanted to come over and play board games. We countered with inviting them over instead. But we may have to cancel that because this is Wednesday already and my cold seems to be getting worse (it usually takes a long time to go away). In any case, next time we expect to play D&D is Sunday after next.

I saw the name on Sunday but I still can't remember it. It's part of a published scenario, but if I think of it I'll see if I can find the critter in the monster manual. Meanwhile the raft he was floating on was ostensibly made of the bodies of some of the svirfneblin who drowned when their town was flooded (re-routed river, which we have to try to find the spot where it was diverted and reverse the process), but it turned out that the bodies in the raft were actually ghouls! We had an interesting fight the other day. So now we've rescued the few survivors who were holed up in the towers that projected up from the water level, and added them to the other svirfneblin we gathered before. (We, by the way, are two fighter-priest dwarves, one priest dwarf who's analogous to a ranger within his kind, two elves both of whom are fighter-mages and one of whom is also a thief, and a gnome illusionist-thief with more attitude than you could imagine.)

The holiday weekend, my cold was essentially gone, so our friends came over and we played a board game, a rather dungeonesque one published back in the '80s and I can't remember the name of that either. But it kept us busy till around 11 PM!! (With a break for supper.)

Spent most of the day working on the scenario for tomorrow night.
All the enemies and their hp's and xp's and goodies.

I usually don't go by the Monster Manual for hit points.
I mean realy here are my players who are 5-8th level with 60-70 hp's
And along comes the bad guys who are the same level or a bit higher
And they have 1-2 hit dice?
Seriously?

So, my bad guys are bad guys on steroids.
They usually have about 10 more hp's than the highest level PC.
Makes for a better battle, I think.

I have a bit more to tweek on it.
But I can do that before everyone comes over.

Morwenna it might just be the class "gnome illusionist"that makes the attitude. Playing one myself in the two weekly campaign. and apart from being a doofus he has an attitude.

Like you Calma i do not stick by the hitpoins in the monstermanual although I do keep it as reference. As I do not enjoy massive hitpoint battles i rather throw in an extra opponent and tweak the monsters a bit so the CR is correct again.

Well, we managed to re-divert the underground river back to its original channel (after dealing with a troop of ghouls--it's the ghouls we're there to rout on behalf of the svirfneblin), so now the svirfneblin have gone to clean up their city as the waters recede. Now to head to the next part of the place, looking for more ghouls... and we understand there are cloakers down here too...

We were unable to game Friday.My other bff wasn't feeling well.So it's been postponed until July.And I had the game written down and everything.

Oh well, it's not like the ink is going to fade anytime soon.

So, just out of curiosity how much real time gaming do you get done in one session?We usually play for about 5 hours on a Friday night.But I'd say at least 90 minutes of that time is used for catching up and dinner.

Some DM's are sticklers about that stuff.Me? I don't care. It's just a game and a gathering of friends.

Happy gaming!

Last edited by Calma on Fri Sep 12, 2014 8:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

Just like us: I keep saying we don't go there to play, we go there to laugh. We usually get in about 3 or 4 hours of gaming, including a supper break, though sometimes we stop playing after supper if someone has to leave early or if the DM is getting too sleepy. We usually start between 2 and 3 PM, eat around 5:30, and break it up around 7.

On another site, I've read where some DM's won't even allow chips and drinks at the table.
They are concerned for spills and "Cheeto fingers" on their books.
Ok, I don't like spills either, but if you are so worried about your books.
Don't use them.
If they are first printing and so valuable, don't use them.
Put them in a cabinet and buy yourself some used ones.

I have an Unearted Arcana that has Coke splashed on a few pages.
It was caused by a million dollar shot when I tossed a note to the DM over her screens
And it landed squarely in her soda.
Hey, that book has character now.

A few months ago, I got onto Amazon and ordered me some used books.
I got some real nice books for about 10 bucks each.
Now no one has to bring their books every week.
The DM uses one set and the players the others.

Oh heck, if we couldn't nosh at the table what would be the point? We go through chips and Doritos regularly, and every week there's soda, half of it provided by the hosts. They're not worried about their books! Some of them are scribbled in and a lot of them (ours too) have gotten ratty covers over the years. (Then there's the pizza for supper, consumed at the game table...)

We do bring some books. We have a big book bag in which we carry our character card boxes, dice, and about 4 or 5 books. The hosts have a whole library, but it's in the basement where we used to play but now we play in their living room so the books are making their way upstairs a few at a time. They're trying to clear some shelf space so that eventually it'll all be upstairs. (They live on the second and third floors; the first floor is the rental apartment.) We always carry the player's manual, the DM guide, Players Option Spells & Magic, and whatever pertinent class-related or race-related books our current characters need. (Right now it's Demihuman Deities, because we're both playing dwarven clerics.) It does help to have more than one copy of each book available to the party!

Haven't been able to game for the past few weeks.
Our other player was sick for our last session.
So hopefully, we will be able to play this Friday.
I have it outlined and everything. Sort of a rarity for me to have that much planned out.